1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to storage network systems, and particularly to user-managed multi-path performance in balanced or unbalanced fabric configurations.
2. Description of Background
Currently, component performance variants and characteristics, scalability issues and high availability of storage area network (SAN) environments present challenges to system administrators. Performance variants include adapter, switch port and host processor speeds. Performance variants can also be caused by the configuration design, where the number of hops in the I/O path is unequal. As the result of performance skew, the user could have an unbalanced SAN, which causes load balance problems for the host multi-path software. Currently there exists a need for methods, systems and computer products that provide the ability of concentrating all the I/O to the most efficient paths, such as those that are connected to their adapters or switches with the best performance and leave the less efficient hardware for failover purpose only, to utilize the hardware resources and achieve high availability.